Banned Books Week

With Banned Books Week just around the corner, I thought it would help to curate some of my favorite resources around the topic.

BANNED BOOKS WEEK IS SEPTEMBER 24-30TH

There are many resources out there to help you have meaningful discussions with your students (and teachers) about this issue. I operated on a flexible schedule, so most of my programming was passive in the terms of displays and morning announcement information.

Here is a picture of our display a few years ago. The students did not discuss BBW in the elementary school so they were very confused to see this display of books they couldn’t read (especially since many were so popular).

Banned Books Week display at Hershey Middle School (2015)

You can most definitely do Banned Books Week programming at the elementary level – and I strongly believe you should!

Favorite Banned Books Week Resources

This year they’re doing a really cool “Rebel Reader” Twitter Tournament. Be sure to sign up to be a participant and be sure to follow the hashtag #rebelreader during BBW. ALA also has lots of links to promotional materials and lots of “Top Ten” lists. Be sure to check out the ALA Office of Intellectual Freedom‘s page for past year activities and other advocacy resources, including this awesome infographic:

Every year I look forward to the Virtual Read-Out. There is a dedicated YouTube channel and you can participate any time throughout the year. This site also has resources for artists, booksellers, kids, librarians, publishers, students, teachers, and writers!

The Freedom to Read Foundation is a great resource year-long. In addition to resources on Banned Books Week, the FTRF has resources on many other hot issues in the library world including, collection personal data, labeling of books, and patron privacy.

SHARING WITH STUDENTS AND STAFF USING MACKINVIA

Something I love about Groups is the ability to Activate/Deactivate groups without deleting. This makes it so easy to use groups from previous years without having to recreate each year.

Don’t forget – MackinVIA is COMPLETELY FREE. Not only is it free, but we actually GIVE YOU FREE BOOKS! You get 10 free eBooks in your account and you can claim loads of free promotional books throughout the school year. With MackinVIA, I can put eBooks, audiobooks, database articles, websites, and videos all in one location – without signing in again. That’s right people – SINGLE SIGN ON TO YOUR DATABASES. I repeat – its free. If you want to learn more about MackinVIA, just shoot me a message or visit this page.